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Soldier by the river

Fiction by David Moore

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 I can see my house from here, the shuffling brown coat tied with string sad eyed old man mumbled.  Sitting on his damp south bank bench staring across a tea stained Thames as if staring into his past.
A slip in time and space, he saw himself running and laughing with a brown haired girl along the cobbled walkway by the Golden hind, taking shelter under the arches, kissing passionately with not a care.
Making vows, undying love never doubting the beat of his bursting heart. So much love the tears would fill his eyes as he professed it, heartfelt.   
Love hurts he had heard and never quite understood, being only an apprentice in the art and then only in theory. The years it had taken to learn of love or at least to start to feel it, they had taken a toll, the gradual acceptance that time spent defending against feeling comes to haunt you with a cloak of unimagined loneliness and deepening sadness.
The hope that one day he could wake feeling joy like those summer days in his boyhood, when he laid bathed in streaming sunlight, early mornings, birdsong and the crash of waves on a deserted shore. The loving assurance of his father’s hand.
Knowing he would never again feel alive in a moment of history and that no one would ever ask.
The drift of sleep, the drizzle of the grey morn. Rush of people going somewhere but not yet aware they are going nowhere.
His lesson unteachable to those unable to hear, they can only learn when ready.
We are all just children and we all end the same.  Survived only by those who remember us.

 

Contact:  moore493@btinternet.com
Copyright 2007  David Moore
Reviews and comments requested
Posted 11/11/2007